How to be a full-time writer in 4 and/or 5 easy steps!
Its fun and easy!
Sometimes it can feel like quite the puzzle to figure out how to become a successful full-time writer. This is particularly true if, like me, you have other timed things in your life: full-time professional, full-time mom, full-time outraged citizen, part-time vegetable eater and occasional fitness buff.
So to help you out, I’ve put together a list of steps to help anyone become a successful writer:
1. Maintain a strict schedule!
If you are dedicated to being a writer, you can always find some soft edges in your daily life that you can harden with an inflexible dedication to your craft. I identified the 5:07 to 6:38am time-slot as being regularly unused by any other demands, so that’s when I am a writer. Having this schedule has really helped me reframe my life as an artist. For example, this morning I was stumbling around early in the morning feeding my dog and cats just before my scheduled writing time and I noticed one of my cats was refusing to eat. So, from about 5:03 to 5:48 I had to isolate, soothe, and handfeed the neurotic feline. As I sat on the floor, with the overpriced, slimy, chicken pate seeping under my fingernails, I was relieved to remember that this was my writing time. I was not a stressed-out pet owner, I was a writer. Being a writer enabled me to ruminate on the nature of caregiving and the fragility of the mortal condition, which I’m certain I would have actually written about right away. But instead the dog needed to be walked. Having a strict schedule has helped make me the writer I am today.
2. Immerse yourself in an inspirational setting!
Currently my writing setting is a 200-year-old log cabin in an ancient boreal forest in Nova Scotia. The old, wide wood plank floors are soft underfoot, my wild harvest loose leaf steeps on the old potbellied stove, and the scent of Balsam Fir permeates the room. Village Candle is my location sponsor and I’ve found them to be super supportive of my writing career. When the peaceful aroma of my writing retreat is strong enough, I can’t even hear the rest of my family struggle to find the milk in the kitchen without my help. The milk is on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Even from the basement I can hear you actually didn’t open the refrigerator, so there is really no reason to call my name. Just open the refrigerator; it is on the top shelf like it always is. Alas, soon I will have to leave this wooded fairly land, but next I’m going to a remote seaside cottage surrounded by lavender crested sand dunes. I’m excited to move there and hear the gentle sounds of the distant ocean waves and smell the soft salty air. Location is important. Don’t buy just any discount candles, take the time to find the truly evocative ones that can mask the odors of paying bills, fixing dinner and doing laundry.
3. Cultivate honest critics!
You won’t get better until you pour your heart and soul into your writing and then present it to someone who will rip the piece apart. My favorite critic is cutting, harsh and demoralizing, but that is how I know she is good. I keep my critic in my own head, so I know I won’t ever lose her. You can also seek out writing groups with outside critics but be aware that can be fraught with quality control problems. You risk getting soft and supportive feedback about having good emotional connection but needing to watch your verb tense. Which is fine, but I’ve found my motivation comes more from soul ripping existential responses that leave my words lifeless and unpublished in my computer files. The critic in my head keeps me from sending things to publishers or even posting in my blog. If you don’t have a good critic you won’t have hundreds of unfinished ideas and cluttered concepts filling your folders, which continues to be one the biggest indicators of success in my writing career.
4. & 5. Be clear and decisive!
With your writing and your career it’s important to be super clear on everything, even if you yourself are confused. Be strong yet vulnerable, concise yet detailed, vivid yet sparse. Nowhere is this more important than when thinking about your own success. In order to be a full-time artist, you need to be dedicated to your art but not overly concerned with the actual commercial success of your work. That’s the only way you actually become successful. It works just like how when you were a kid and were not quite sure if the Easter Bunny or Santa were real, but you loved getting the presents so you still believed. Except, not at all like that because there were actual real people pretending something was real. So it’s more like if you didn’t believe in Santa but were still really good all year, and still got the iPad for Christmas but it somehow didn’t come from either your parents or any actual person. It’s just like that but easier and harder, and less understandable. Again, just be clear and decisive, such as creating metaphors you get lost in or repeating ideas you are not sure you understand.
I wish you all the success, but maybe not too much success. I strive to cultivate a network full of mutual admiration and support yet filled with only people who aren’t making more money writing than me.
Good Luck and remember, being a full-time writer is super easy!
